I’m at conference called “Cyberinfrastructure and University Policy – Enabling Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation” in DC. There are about 50 people here, heavy on senior ICT (info and communications tech) policy folks, but including academics and open access advocates.

Since I feel like a fish out of water here — these folks know way more about cyberinfrastructure than I do, including what “cyberinfrastructure” means — at last night’s reception I asked John Wilbanks of Science Commons what it’s about. (I am a huge John Wilbanks fan, of course.) As I understand it, this meeting hopes to make progress in the infrastructure for knitting together what we collectively know, especially by using universities. That infrastructure includes issues of pipes, rights, and, yes, metadata.

The reception was surprisingly a tie and jacket affair for the men — the attendees seem to be even split among the various genital possibilities — where the word “senior” kept showing up in titles. Lots of interesting discussions.

So, I’m looking forward to a day as a fish out of water.

[Tags: science_commons cyberinf ]

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Tim Bray has a terrific piece on the development of XML, now in its tenth year as an official standard. He focuses on the people, not on the technicalities of the standard.

It’s worth it just to re-read Tim’s words about Yuri Rubinsky, an SGML advocate of enormous energy and passion, without a mean bone in his body. Tim puts it better. Yuri died way too young, and I miss him.

It’s also worth it to learn the off-the-mainstage history of XML, of course.

* * *

Tim is a terrific writer. And I’m happy to say that we’ve been friends for a long time (which is somewhere between disclosure and bragging). But, the one thing that put me off in his piece was his providing physical descriptions. I assume they’re accurate, and he writes them with flair, but they struck me as irrelevant. Why does it help me to know that someone is burly and someone else is buxom?

And yet, it does seem to help.

But maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it only seems to help.

As you can tell, I’m torn by this. I’ve occasionally briefly described people in things I’ve written. But I don’t feel quite right about it

[Tags: xml tim_bray standards ]

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The creators of the amazing “Yes We Can” Obama video have a new version up that renders the video using a mosaic of Flickr photos — easier to see than explain. If you want your photo to show up in it, post it at Flickr and tag it “hopeactchange.”

Interestingly, the “act” page of the site lists the Web sites of all the candidates, not just Obama’s

The original video I found moving and inspiring. Re-rendering it using images from everyone who cares to participate is not going to change the world or even change any minds. It’s symbolic. Good. When the current symbols of America are George W. Bush and waterboarding, it’s not so bad to have a “we” symbol show up in our mirror.

[Tags: politics obama videos ]

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Howard Rheingold has posted the front and back covers of his 1974 book, War of the Gurus. If you don’t look closely, you’ll think it’s written by the reporter-columnist, Jack Anderson. Google Books has nothing on it except that it also gives a credit to Kelly Freas, the great sf and MAD illustrator.

I’m guessing that Howard is the Kevin Bacon for the rest of us.

[Tags: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Anderson ]

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Ryan Terry is an illustrator and a Flash guy. His home page is like one of those poke-n-play CD illustrated books for kids, except better. His previous one is at least as good. (Thanks to Marc Nathan for the link, via Twitter.

[Tags: ryan_terry flash illustrations home_page resume marketing ]

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Brad Sucks came to Harvard this week and gave a performance-conversation and addressed the class I’m co-teaching with John Palfrey (blogged here and here). There were a few surprises.

What was not surprising was that Brad’s totally delightful, frank, and just a good guy.

First, he pronounces his last name (Turcotte) as Tur-COTT, not Tur-COAT. I stand corrected. Also, he likes his name written as “Brad Sucks,” not “BradSucks.” Sorry twice, Brad!

Second, especially during the class, I was struck by how different copyright looks to Brad than it looks to, well, lots of others. It’s not just that copyright protection looks to Brad like a limitation on how widely his music spreads and his musical career builds. Rather, it was how foreign copyright looks to him. From what he said, it seems like an imposition of an artificial construct place on top of the work.

Here’s what I think is happening, although I can’t say that this is what Brad is thinking. To people who think of music as a work, copyright looks like the natural boundary of their work, the ethical edge of their work itself. Others (Brad, maybe?) think of music not so much as a work as a shared experience, as a connection with listeners. For them, listening is co-creation. The work feels more like a performance to them. The concept of copyright doesn’t fit easily over such a view.

Third, Brad surprised both the class and the attendees at the performance-conversation with his claim that he is a “horrible capitalist” who gives his songs away for intensely practical reasons, not because he’s an anti-copyright activist.

Thanks for coming, Brad. And thanks for being so BradSucksy. [Tags: brad_sucks bradsucks copyright copyleft music harvard ]

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I was just taking a little break, watching some political ads on YouTube.

Yup. Ads I want to see. Ads I enjoyed. Not ads thrust in my face, interrupting me.

Yup, I was watching ads I want to watch. As if that were something we always could do. [Tags: ads marketing broadcast politics ]

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The NY Times reports that Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences will vote next week on a proposal that would require faculty to deposit a copy of their articles in an open access Harvard repository even as they submit those articles to academic journals.

I like this idea a lot. I only wish it went further. Faculty members will be allowed to opt-out of the requirement pretty much at will (as I understand it), which could vitiate it: If a prestigious journal accepts an article but only if it’s not been made openly available, faculty members may well decide it’s more important for their careers to be published in the journal. I would prefer to see the Harvard proposal paired with some form of official encouragement to tenure committees to look favorably upon faculty members who make their work widely and freely available.

Nothing is without drawbacks. A well-run, reliable, thorough peer-review system costs money. But there’s also an expense to funding peer review by limiting access to the work that makes it through the process. Likewise, while the current publication system directs our attention efficiently, but there’s a price to the very efficiency of such a system: innovation can arise from what looked liked inefficiencies. There’s value in the long tail of research.

If we were today building a system for evaluating scholarly research and for making it maximally available, we would not build anything like the current paper-based system. Well, we are building such a system. The Harvard proposal will, in my opinion, help.

Disclosure: I’m a fellow at the Berkman Center which is part of the Law School, not the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and I’m not a faculty member in any case. Stuart Shieber, one of the sponsors of the proposal, is a director of the Center.) [Tags: open_access peer_review scholarship research publishing media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Remember Grokster? It was an attempt to be Napster without having a centralized database of songs and users. It was shut down by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.

Go to Grokster.com now and you are not only told that Grokster is no more but that you are at risk simply by having gone to the site.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 123.123.123.123 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don’t think you can’t get caught. You are not anonymous.

(The IP address they give is the right one.)

The site then suggests:

In the meantime, please visit www.respectcopyrights.com and www.musicunited.org to learn more about copyright.

RespectCopyrights.com really should be called FearCopyrights.com. It’s an MPAA scare site that doesn’t let you know you still have rights when using copyrighted material. (It captures the back arrow key in your browser, which is not only annoying, controlling and disrespectful, it’s a way of driving up the hit count.) MusicUnited is an music industry pro-DRM propaganda site. Hey, it’s their right. It’s a free country. Sort of.

[Tags: copyright copyleft grokster riaa mpaa broadcast_flag drm ]

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The Berkman Center has an amazing string of events set up this spring, in part as a celebration of the Center’s tenth year. You can see the list here.

And don’t forget Monday evening’s performance by and conversation with Brad Sucks, a thoroughly webby musician with a pure heart and low self-esteem. It’ll be in Griswold Hall Room 110 at Harvard Law. It’s free and open to all; rsvp to [email protected].

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